Exponent
by rhyme time
Summary: Grissom and Sara are forced to confront the accumulation of their experiences, good and bad.


Title: Exponent  
Author: rhyme time  
Disclaimer: As far as I know, the lunatics are still running the asylum.  
Rating: T-ish  
Spoilers: Everything.  
Author's Notes: For my Nerd Twin.  
Summary: Sara and Grissom are forced to confront the accumulation of their experiences, good and bad.

/_One_. It's me./

She is not beautiful.

Her eyes are too small for her face.

Her smile is too wide.

There is a too-large gap between her front teeth.

When she speaks, the construct of her sentence is rendered inconsequential because she punctuates every sentence with a question mark -- as if she is not quite sure about anything.

Her limbs are too long.

Her hair does not fall in lustrous waves over her shoulders. Instead, she wears it in a messy ponytail.

She asks too many questions about anthropology.

Her spirited observations make him nervous.

Two curls escape her ponytail holder, a wispy, mocking smile framing her face.

Deep inside he feels compelled to smooth her hair, to ask her to stop talking.

/_Two_. Since when are you interested in beauty?/

Follow the evidence.

The evidence never lies.

He rounds the corner and she is there, catching him completely off guard.

He smiles and sighs at once, knowing this is a metaphor for their relationship.

As he approaches Sara, he notices not for the first time that she is very tall. Her legs are very long. She is very gangly.

When he asks why she is there, she responds with, "Contextualizing."

This is how they speak to one another -- under cover of darkness, through case files and other people's experiences.

They spend several seconds pretending to look around. As if this random meeting means nothing.

Ashleigh James, in an incarnation of herself she will never be again (and truthfully, never was), stares at them from her billboard.

Back at the lab, Sara unlocks the key to Ashleigh's secrets and, ultimately, the cause of her death. She hauntingly explains Ashleigh's system of input and output. It is not the first time he has seen Sara affected by a case, bothered.

The anguish reins in her too-wide smile, hides her deep dimples from view. She closes her too-small eyes and he knows she is visualizing Ashleigh's final moments, wondering if the self-inflicted wounds hurt at all or if it was as he proclaims to the team, a release.

"The very nature of addiction whether it be self-medicating or self-mutilating is that the very behavior we use to survive it becomes the behavior that ends up killing us," he dispenses his wisdom cavalierly, as if it doesn't apply to his life, to his addiction.

He looks at Sara, surprised by her continued silence.

His summation of events doesn't stop, outwardly he doesn't skip a beat, but he wonders what Sara sees when she looks in the mirror.

He thinks that grief contorts her into the most beautiful thing he's ever seen.

/_Three_. I don't know what to do about this./

He was never going to be able avoid the cliché of this moment.

For the last three years he has been steeling himself for this confrontation, readying the perfect response.

She looks odd.

He thinks she is parting her hair differently.

It's not her best look.

He does his best not to look at her, as if lack of eye contact will serve as a deterrent.

Whether or not he wants to, he knows her, -– not just that she wears medium-sized coveralls when she's working in the garage, or that she's a vegetarian, or that her ears are not pierced – but he knows the way she thinks, knows what the expression on her face means.

He knows she is not going to let this go.

When she asks him to have dinner with her what he means to say is that he is her boss, she is his subordinate, and that he doesn't have feelings for her in a romantic way. They're friends, only friends.

Before he can respond, he glances at her hand -– it's bandaged, and he knows that she would not be hurt if he had never asked her to come here. But, he did ask her to come here, and she is hurt.

His mind is filled with factoids about her and he doesn't know why he knows that all she wanted in seventh grade was a pair of jelly shoes –- because all the normal girls had them, and for once she just wanted to be normal. He doesn't know why there is a pair of jelly shoes in his closet, in her size, that he ordered off the Internet. She's a member of the mile high club. Rape cases always bring about severe depression. She likes unsweetened tea and will not eat toast unless it's smothered in grape jelly. She loves ass kicking boots. Her clothes often match her mood (blue and purple are almost always good days).

His intent is to make a clean break, to put an end to whatever feelings she has for him.

When he looks at her, the rejection is on the tip of his tongue, but there is something about the way she leans against his door jamb, as if she belongs there, that rattles him.

He rejects her, of course, but the break is anything but clean. It's awkward and confused and not at all what he's been rehearsing all these years. Not even close.

She smiles but he sees her heartache in the way she bites the inside of her lip. There is a vulnerability in her eyes that causes him to hold his breath, in case it is contagious.

She walks away speaking softly of "too late." He wonders silently 'Too late for what?' and finally allows himself to breathe.

/_Four._ Pin me down./

If he had to pick one case to wipe from his memory, it would be the murder of Debbie Marlin.

He wonders what kind of man that makes him –- he's worked cases of dead children, abused wives, too many raped little girls, but he'd give anything to wipe from his mind the memory of Debbie Marlin dead on the floor of her bathroom.

There are differences, of course, but it's not the differences he notices. The likeness steals the breath from his lungs, just reaches right inside him and _takes it_ -- Sara and Debbie Marlin so devastatingly similar that he thinks about retiring.

He could get up, walk out of the house and past his team and retire right now, but it won't matter because he can't force selective amnesia. His eyes have already seen her dead body.

He assigns Sara the perimeter.

He's protecting her.

He's protecting himself.

She goes home after shift and he stays and stays and stays. She calls and offers in her helpful way to assist him. The sound of her voice is like nails down a chalkboard. He lies to avoid her.

When the team consults on a conference call, she pipes up with a suggestion, and he holds the phone away from his ear because the sound of her sweet, earnest voice makes him want to vomit.

He closes his eyes and sees Debbie Marlin's throat spread open like a bloody smile and wonders how Sara has managed to find her voice.

In Greek mythology, Tartarus's punishment for Sisyphus's hubris is that for all eternity Sisyphus is condemned to roll a boulder up a hill only to watch it roll downhill, repeating the process forever. Grissom thinks that God or the universe is punishing him, a contemporary take on Sisyphus. He has been so sure that he can avoid facing this thing, this fated, ordained _thing_ between him and Sara that he has played god with their lives. He has tried to outsmart the signs and the warnings and the opportunities. His punishment isn't the pointless task of rolling a boulder up and down a hill; his punishment is this case, living and reliving this case, knowing he isn't smarter or cleverer or wiser than whatever it is that brought Sara into his life.

He thinks about all the times he's hurt Sara – there is some satisfaction in knowing he has the power to hurt her (Dear God, _what kind of man does that make him?_), to affect her in a way other than her shift assignment. He hates that a part of him understands Lurie's reasons, that if he couldn't have Debbie, no one could, because what has he been doing for the last four years except finding ways to keep Sara tied up in knots, tied to him?

He visualizes the crime, as he always does, but then he's murdering Debbie and Debbie is Sara and he can't bring about justice for Debbie, and he can't make right all the times he's killed Sara's spirit with his unkind, unfeeling, thoughtless words and he knows that he is Sisyphus, and he will shoulder this burden for the rest of his life.

/_Five_. What do you want from me?/

If he is honest about Sara, and he rarely is, he has known for a long time that she has suffered immensely in her life.

He starts off cocky and demanding, quoting movies and cherry picking reasons why she's in this predicament. In his mind, that's what he calls it: Sara's predicament. He is unprepared for the awful truth. At the end of her story, there is a lump in his throat and he swallows and swallows but it won't go away.

He tries to reconcile the Sara he knows with the Sara who survived the hell of domestic violence, seeing her mother stab her father to death, and living out her teenage years in the foster care system. Stabbings are messy business, and this sounds more than messy. He knows the force it would take, the violence, the rage to create the scene she is describing in her scientific way.

To his great shame he doesn't ask much about what she went through, he just can't bear it.

He reaches out to her and she grips his hand so tightly that his fingers turn white. The strength of her hold on him produces a numbing effect, and he is relieved to staunch the flow of his feelings, but it is only temporary.

She cries and he blinks and looks away because seeing her this way is breaking his heart. He squeezes her hand harder because he doesn't want to feel this way about her, he doesn't want to care so much, but it is too late –- it is equivalent to putting his finger in a dam that has already broken, that is already flooding the unsuspecting town below.

And, so, he lets the dam break and he feels so much that he can't breathe, he simply cannot breathe. He pulls on her hand and she looks up at him.

They are out of their element, there is no sly communication, no unspoken understanding. He is going to have to speak to her.

"Come here," he says softly, and he realizes that she has been rubbing off on him because there is a slight question attached to his imperative.

With the back of her hand she wipes her eyes, and then she rises from her chair and he scoots over on the couch. She sits beside him and waits for him to tell her what to do next because that is what she does, that is how their relationship exists.

For a moment she stares at her hands folded on her lap, and he stares at her staring, and then in the bravest action of his life he puts his arm around her. She looks at him and cocks her head, and of course it is a question, of course, because all these years he has carefully manipulated their interaction so that she will never know how he feels about her.

It is so awkward that he wants to get up and leave, and then she is moving and her head is on his shoulder and they are half sitting up and half lying down, finally facing each other.

He takes a deep breath. "That's better," he says.

And it is.

/_Six_. Can the love be real...?/

They have shared a bed exactly eleven times before he says something impossibly idiotic.

They have always communicated through cases, through work, through some sort of conduit. They have not yet perfected the art of simply speaking to each other. In truth, they are still transitioning.

He says something about the relationship at the center of their case being smothering, and he knows as soon as he's said it, knows by the arch of her eyebrow, that she thinks he is talking about them.

He wants to take it back but he can't, he simply can't.

For a week, she keeps her distance. She is pleasant enough and she smiles, but she doesn't come over after work and he doesn't call her.

After seven days without her in bed beside him, he is ready to swallow glass, to walk over hot coals, to actually apologize to bring her back to him.

But, then, she shows up after work with a bottle of wine and take-out Thai and he doesn't have to swallow glass or walk over hot coals, and he forgets to apologize.

They keep their relationship private, reveling in the secrecy.

He doesn't tell her that he loves her, not directly, but he pours out his heart to her in other ways and she says she never wants to say goodbye.

/_Seven_. Now you know how it feels./

They've had two years together without a major fight. He gives all the credit to Sara who has the patience of a saint and who is, quite possibly, the most low-maintenance girlfriend known to man.

Admittedly, not telling her about the sabbatical until three days before he was scheduled to leave was a mistake, and she is noticeably distant upon his return. Her icy mood takes a few days to thaw, but she does, eventually, and it requires only waiting on his part.

She shaves his sabbatical beard and it is the single most erotic moment of his life. Their first union post-sabbatical is in his bathroom, and by the end of it she is wearing only leftover shaving cream from his face.

When he wipes it off, she laughs, and he knows he is forgiven.

Sometimes, he thinks she is unshakable, that she is immune to his thoughtlessness.

His mistake is never apologizing, never atoning for his sins, and her mistake is never requiring it.

He has told her he loves her twice – once, in a post-coital haze before sleep, and then two weeks ago as he looked over the sports section and she ate oatmeal.

She has never said she loves him, although he knows she does.

When he sees Sara in Heather's hospital room, he knows something is up, knows that she is off-kilter.

She never asks about past lovers or relationships or anything of the sort, but her presence in the hospital room sends him a message loud and clear. He just wishes he could figure out what it is.

When he chooses to be Heather's alibi, when he stays with her and doesn't go home, doesn't even call Sara to let her know what's going on, he thinks she'll understand when he's able to explain it to her.

But, then, even he hears the gossip and Sara is as cold to the touch as a corpse and when she looks at him he sees that she is terrified about what he might say. He tells her that Heather is his friend but that's not the right thing to say, so he says that he's the only one Heather trusts and that is somehow worse.

He stops talking, he just shuts his mouth, because he has heard that when you find yourself in a hole the first rule is to _just_ _stop digging_.

At first, he simply lets her have her space, thinking it will blow over. But, when it's time for bed that first night after his slumber party at Heather's and she stays on the couch as he makes the slow trek toward their bedroom, he knows this is no ordinary fit of pique.

Her silence makes him nervous.

In the morning, she is half off the couch, her hair sticking up in every direction from a restless night's sleep. He picks up the blanket off the floor and drapes it over her body.

She cracks open an eye and looks at him.

He sits in the chair opposite the couch and pretends to do the crossword puzzle.

After several minutes, she rises, folds the blanket and heads to the shower.

Day after day she is perfunctory – at work and at home – and he wonders if this time he has gone too far, if he has tested the limits of her patience and understanding.

On the fifth day, he tries to explain what happened and that he would never be unfaithful, but she chokes on her yogurt and says she doesn't want an explanation.

A week and a half later she is still on the couch, and he is officially panicking. He doesn't know how to make this right, doesn't know why she's not letting it go.

Finally, they have coinciding days off. Together, they cook dinner, but the extent of the conversation is "pass the oregano" and "these noodles need a few more minutes." She twists her fork in a mound of spaghetti and is lifting the fork to her mouth when he reaches across the table and puts his hand over hers.

"I'm sorry," he says.

She nods once and puts down her fork. He is horrified when she starts crying.

"Sara?"

She winces and her head is so bowed he thinks she's going to end up face first in her plate of spaghetti.

"You can't keep doing this," she whispers, finally. For the first time in his long memory of them, there is no question in her voice, only the soft, simple command she utters.

"What?" he asks anxiously.

She brushes the tears out of her eyes and shakes her head, her voice so low he has to lean across his plate to hear her. Marinara sauce leaches into the center of his white t-shirt.

"Pretending it doesn't matter when I'm hurting," she says.

/_Eight_. You know I love you. I feel I've loved you forever./

The injuries are many and ranging in severity: three cracked ribs, left arm broken in two places, multiple abrasions on her face, an assortment of bruises covering her entire body, ingestion of an unknown drug, dehydration, heat stroke.

She is a living, breathing wound, and he holds the hand of her uninjured arm because it is the only place he feels he can touch her without causing pain.

In the helicopter, she was roused to a state of semi-consciousness but she never spoke. Once they arrived at the hospital, she was whisked away for tests, stabilization, and surgery on her arm. He has yet to speak to her, to ask her any questions about what happened.

The team finds their way to the hospital but he has no information to give them. A migraine pulses to life behind his eyes, but he doesn't ask for relief because Sara, his precious Sara, had not known relief for over 27 hours.

Sara's lifeless body curled up on the desert floor is another memory that he is sure will haunt him until his dying day -– along with Debbie Marlin, the images his mind constructs based on confessions about her childhood, her being held hostage at the mental hospital a few years ago.

She stirs and he leans closer to the bed so she'll know he's there. Her eyes find his, and she stares at him for the longest time, caressing his face with her gaze.

"Are you okay?" she asks, and her voice sounds like her face looks, a raw, swollen wound.

The question catches him off guard and his breath hitches in his chest. Of course she thinks about him before herself.

He leans over and kisses around an angry, red scrape on her temple. "I should be asking you that," he says.

She laughs and immediately regrets it, winces and asks, "Broken ribs?"

He nods. "Three," he replies. "And your arm is broken in two places and required surgery."

She says nothing else and he takes her silence as a cue to continue.

"We caught her," he says, "Natalie," he clarifies. "I'm sure the public defender will try to form some sort of insanity defense, and that might not be far off, but either way she won't hurt you again." He looks at her, trying to gauge her reaction. "You're safe," he says, finally.

She falls asleep and he steals into her hospital bathroom and throws up. The action doesn't lessen the pain of his migraine but somehow he feels better.

Three days later they return home, and she meanders silently around the edges of their apartment. He's helped her take sponge baths, but her broken ribs and the cast on her arm make it difficult to do much more than that.

She keeps her hair pulled back in a ponytail but it is unruly as ever.

He wants to ask her to talk to him, to tell him why she paces their apartment like a caged animal.

But he doesn't because they are people who give each other space, because he has no idea how to broach the subject of her suffering. Something more than a near death experience happened in the desert and he is, to put it simply, terrified of what she might tell him.

When she tells him she'll switch shifts, he wants to argue, but he also wants her to feel in control of her life and besides, she's so convincingly optimistic.

He asks her to marry him and she says yes, and he thinks finally, finally they're in the clear. For one week everything is perfect, they are happier than they've ever been.

She's gone before they can pick out a ring, and at night her words haunt him:

_You can't keep doing this…pretending it doesn't matter when I'm hurting._

Is that what she thinks?

It is hard to admit that in the end it isn't the job, a bad case, Natalie, or nearly dying that drives her from his arms. It is him and his bad habits and him taking for granted that she'd always been strong enough for both of them.

/_Nine_. Tell me./

Warrick is dead and Sara is home and he doesn't know which emotion is stronger: devastation or exhilaration.

The phone rings and rings but he doesn't answer it. This surprises her. He is so in love with her and has missed her so much that he allows himself to be selfish.

He loves the gentle pressure of her head against his chest, the way she holds his hand. The sunlight hits her white, cotton blouse just right and the effect is so ethereal that he's afraid if he moves she will disappear. For a long time they simply stay on the bed, but eventually they find their way under the covers.

There is a kind of lamentation present in their lovemaking, an elegiac undercurrent that prevents him from wholly enjoying her presence.

He finds her return ticket to San Francisco and is so angry and hurt that he leaves for work without so much as a word to her.

She works the death of Pamela Adler and he knows, deep down, the way the case will end. In a moment of complete insensitivity, he also knows that Sara will use this to justify her leaving.

He can't find a way to simply speak to her, to tell her that she's hurting him, and so he reverts back to an old method of communication.

"Maybe he needed her to leave him," he says with forced ease, referring to her case.

Annoyance plays over her face; she has become better at masking her emotions when he hurts her. "Who are we talking about right now?" she asks.

She is gone when he returns home.

Using absurdly twisted logic, he believes they are still in a relationship. This is, he reasons, a trying time, something they will overcome.

If he is honest about their relationship, and he sometimes is, he knows he has forced an ultimatum.

He is convinced that she has gone to tie up loose ends, and that she'll be back when she's laid to rest all her demons.

When she breaks up with him via video he is in a state of denial. This isn't what he expected, isn't what he wants at all.

For days he feels nauseous and then he aches, every part of his body aches and is tender to the touch, and he lays in bed and can't sleep and he thinks, _Oh my God, I just want to stop hurting._

At work, he is sloppy and forgetful and wrongly categorizes evidence, and he thinks, _Focus, just focus_, but he doesn't care and his mind presses the play button on Sara's video. He realizes she wasn't looking at the camera when she told him that it was over. She must think this is what he wants, but it's not, it's not even close to what he wants.

He just wanted her to come back to him, for things to be like they were. No more limbo, no more pain, but he realizes with sudden clarity that there is no going back. There is only going forward, and she is going forward –- with or without him.

He resigns and doesn't finish the crossword puzzle from the paper of his last shift because as the old adage goes, insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. He leaves behind everything that is comfortable and predictable and sure because it is not a life, not without her.

It takes him days and days to get to her, and he's had time to think, yes he has, and he is going to say some things when he sees her. Some important things.

But, then, he's there and she's there and he can't say anything because his heart is jackhammering inside his chest and he is afraid, terrified that she will turn around and ask him, 'What are you doing here?'

She turns around and doesn't say anything, but he can see in her eyes that she has been hoping for this moment, wanting for him to come home.

He goes to her and she accepts him as he is, as always.

/_Ten_. …I'm Mrs. Grissom./

Paris is not a bad place to teach or wile away time until their research grant comes through.

For months they are the ultimate tourists -- the Louvre, Eiffel tower, Pantheon, Villa Savoye, Rambouillet Palace, Paris Tropical Aquarium, Towers of Notre Dame, and on and on.

She won't let him buy her an expensive ring, but he splurges on their honeymoon and they stay at a series of extravagant hotels around the city, a sort of treasure hunt of happiness. They order room service and enjoy spa treatments and visit the theatre, and he thinks that if this is as good as it gets, this is heaven on earth with her by his side.

They are married and he relishes the opportunity to talk about her to his colleagues, to his students, to the barista at the coffee shop around the corner from their apartment. All of his conversations include "My wife" this and "My wife" that, and the words on his tongue taste wonderful and exotic.

One day the phone rings and it is Ecklie and she is leaving for Vegas a week later. He pretends to understand but he doesn't understand at all.

She comes home two weeks later but it is different, they are different. She leaves again and his conversations with his colleagues, to his students, and while he is waiting for his coffee at the coffee shop around the corner from their apartment revert back to "Sara" this and "Sara" that and he knows it means something.

At home, he eats dinner for one, and sits at the table staring at her empty chair and wondering where she is, where she really is, and why she's not with him.

He picks her up at the airport and her smile is too wide, too eager. Her eyes are too small because she is so tired. Her hair is a mess and she talks for the entire ride back to their apartment but she doesn't say anything, not anything at all.

On this trip home she sleeps for the first two days, and then she spends a day sitting on the chaise in a tank top and her underwear, drinking coffee and eating granola. Finally, she looks up and suggests they take the rail to London for a few days.

"I've got classes, Sara," he reminds her.

Two days later they are sharing a quiet dinner, and he is tired of watching her push around the food on her plate.

She is too thin and too quiet and this is too much like old times, the times he tries so hard to pretend don't exist in their otherwise compelling love story.

"Sara," he says, putting down his fork.

With her free hand she takes a sip of wine, sets down the glass and continues not eating her leek gratin. "Hmm," she hums, but she doesn't look at him.

"Look at me," he commands, and she does and raises her eyebrows. Even after all this time, after all they've been through and as much as he loves her, he still finds the art of communication difficult. "I don't want to pretend you're not hurting," he says evenly.

Her eyes widen and he knows he has, for once, said something right.

"I'm an old man," he tells her with an undercurrent of humor. "I can't continue chasing you around the world," he finishes seriously. But he will, if that's what it takes, he will.

She opens her mouth to argue but then she remembers that he did leave behind his life and possessions and follow her to Costa Rica, and because she wanted to conduct research she went to Paris for a grant, and he decided to teach at the Sorbonne and help replenish their nest egg, and why is she in Vegas while he is living their life alone?

"I'm sorry," she says.

He shakes his head. "Don't be sorry. What's going on, love?"

"I've been lying to you," she confesses.

His heart rate speeds up at the unexpected revelation.

"Lying about what?" he asks nervously.

"I'm not better," she admits. "I'm having nightmares and panic attacks."

For a split second he is angry and then, because he loves her more than he loves himself, he is worried.

"Why didn't you tell me? Why didn't you stay here with me so we could work it out?"

She closes her eyes and says softly, "I'm afraid if I slow down it's going to catch up with me."

"What is going to catch up with you?"

Opening her eyes, she looks at him. "My life."

This is hard for him to understand because he is a part of her life, too, and it hasn't been all bad. They've been happy.

"I'm still trying to figure out who I am," she says.

He pushes aside his plate and takes her hand. "You're Sara, you're my wife," he replies.

"I am," she says, smiling. "I'm Mrs. Grissom."

He watches as she uses her thumb to twist her wedding band around her finger.

"What can I do?" he asks after a long silence.

"This thing in Vegas," she says, "it's not really about helping out, it's about leaving on my terms."

Nodding, he says, "I understand that."

She looks at him, arches her eyebrow.

"I do," he affirms.

They agree that this trip to Vegas will be her last. Two days later she leaves, and it is agony without her. It is torture knowing that she is hurting and there is nothing he can do about it.

For the three weeks she is in Vegas, he racks his brain about how best to help her.

Her return flight arrives in the middle of his morning class, and so she catches a cab to their apartment. That evening, he drops his briefcase by the front door, and calls out to her, "Honey, I'm home."

He's always wanted to say that to someone, well, not to someone; he amends his thought, because if he's being honest about their relationship, and he is, he's always wanted to say that to her.

The balcony door is open and the long, white curtains that frame the French doors are billowing cinematically and are so beautiful that he wants to take a picture; he wants hard proof that they're living this life. She's sitting on the chaise, reading a book, wearing a tank top and her Periodic Table pajama pants. He smiles because Au is situated across her crotch and that never fails to amuse him.

She looks up from her book, and he expects her to smile at him and she does, barely. "Hey," she says tiredly.

"How was your flight?" he asks.

"Uneventful," she answers.

"Good, good," he says.

He crosses the room and sits on the edge of the chaise, tucks an unruly strand of hair behind her ear.

"I think you should talk to someone," he says.

She narrows her eyes. "You know how I feel about shrinks, Gil."

Gently, he kisses her forehead, and he stays close to her because he can, because being close to her is his heart's desire. His lips brush against her skin as he whispers, "I think you should talk to me, sweetheart."

And so she does.

She pours out her heart and tells him everything.

_Everything._

/END/


End file.
